Up in the trees at the Maliau Basin

After saying goodbye to the Malay school teachers we were straight into our walk through the canopy. The view on the way is quite breath taking at times.  Low midst really make the forest look "the part".
 

The canopy walk, called the "Sky walk" starts at the Kinabatangan river, although it is still quite young here and not the mighty beast it turns into later on.  It's a long series of bridges between trees.

The entrance to the Canopy Walk

The animals tend to avoid the sky walk, so there wasn't any chance of us seeing a herd of elephants, or a pair of orang-utans on the walk but walking along the canopy you notice something, something that is obvious.  There are allot of plants in the rainforest.  I mean, where there should be one plant, there are two plants or three or four, all stacked one on top of the other, clinging onto each other.

For many, the floor is something that has nothing to do with them.  This is a Flower Palm, its spores find little cracks in trees and it grows there, the roots pull moisture straight out of the air.  Some gardens plant dead tree trunks and seed them with the spores.

 

It's a short walk, it only takes around half an hour, but as I said, the views can be breathtaking.

 

 

It's estimated that there are 800 different species of plant in any single square kilometre. There are tarzan-esk vines hanging down and, yes, you can swing from them, I checked.

 

Of course, the fruits are very important for feeding animals, and finding them.  Apparently you should look for these:

 

 

 

I can't remember what they are called but it seems that just about every animal in the forest can eat them.  For some it's not their first choice but they all seem to be able to fall back on it in a pinch.  In the case of humans though they are poisonous.  Sometimes I wonder how we survived this long, everything makes us die, then I remember that, in a pinch, we could sit and wait for the animals that eat the fruit, and then eat them.  Mystery solved.

We walked back again.

Breakfast with the Malaysians

Walking back to our cabin with our freshly muddied boots and kecks we walked past the Malaysian school group. Man, the chap we'd shared the 4x4 with on the way to the centre was there with the rest of the staff.  They called us over and as we had half an hour before breakfast we had time to join them for a bit, although it would mean I'd have to forfeit my pre-breakfast snooze.

As soon as we sat down someone came over with a tray of sandwiches and a fresh jug of honey lemon tea.  Dad was quickly accosted and questioned by Man, who seemed to find him a fascinating anomaly and who I think found it hard to accept that I would speak without Dad's permission.  This was a cultural thing, I found out later, on the island they come good manners are to always gibe way to your elders.  I sat talking to a planter (who reminded me of Uncle Ian) , who was telling me how they wanted to meet westerners because they felt isolated and technologically behind but that, there weren't any drug dealers before and a lot of their youth was felling prey to it.

Borneo, Malaysia seems to be going through a very rapid and painful cultural change.  The development everywhere has a feel of being rushed.  We saw lots of start up communities on the way to the basin, but lots of people selling (or failing to sell) forest fruits in ramshackle huts on the street.

Even the shopping centres seem to describe a country trying to be western.  There are entire floors with nothing but hair dressers on them; another with only womens' fashion shops.


Soon noodles and soup arrived on the table too and it was clear that we weren't leaving for a while.  Facebook seems to be the main method of communication here and we were both asked, several times for our Facebook accounts.  Dad, being and social networking luddite that he is, doesn't have one and searching Facebook for my name returns a large number of people.  They insisted on something though son they have Dad's email and mine.

We ate the food and Dad was quizzed on everything and I was talking to a palm tree planter who was telling me about the problems on the island they are from.

They said that they were starting to suffer from the same problems that the richer nations have suffered from for a while.  The foreign influences were bringing with them a desire for more commodities like computers, music systems, TVs and, of course, cocaine and the other recreational drugs.

He said that he wanted better technology so here could make more money so that he could send his children away to learn about the world outside the island, but that if technology were to arrive then the manual labourers who work in his plantation would loose their jobs.

After an hour and a half we had to make our excuses and leave, our breakfast would be long cold by now so we put our boots back on, topped up out water and went to meet our guide again.  After a short wander we found him waiting for us at the entrance.  There is a huge model of the basin there and he talked us through the different camps before we were going to go on the canopy walk.  One of the other members of staff rushed over and spoke to him for minute in Malay and then has asked us if we'd like to join the school group.  At first I though 'hell no', but he said it wasn't instead of anything else we were doing so I thought 'why not?'.

We went into an auditorium, I assumed that watch a 'made for schools' edutainment film about the Basin.  Nope.  We were told to sit at the front of the front-centre where the teachers had reserved seats for us, because we were the guests of honour at the award ceremony form the school.  I was exhausted and sitting through an hour ceremony given in Malay was finishing me off.

After the school song was sung, which was quite jolly, and the state song, there were several talks from the students and the staff.  Even though I didn't understand a word of it, it was jolly and everyone was smiling and laughing and calling the sports team's chant so it was hard not to smile and laugh too.  There was a very foot tapping, clap your hands song that the students had written there accompanied by some of them playing acoustic guitar.

There were prizes for the students who answered some 'on the spot' questions.  After those there were prizes for the student who has achieved various goals during heir holidays, some presented by the first of honour 'Mr. Allan'.

In think they must have thought that, in his accelerated years, Mr. Allan must be getting tired from all the standing up and sitting down again so I (as 'Mr. Allan's Son') got to present an awards as well.

Finally, both Dad and me got prizes of our own.  We each got a pretty nifty, Maliau Basin multi-torch.

When the ceremony was over, it was time for a group photo with, Dad and me in the front row.

Maliau Basin. A non-stop day

Wow, that was a bad night.

We don't have air conditioning in the room, only a ceiling fan. When we first turned it on, bits on insect flew all over Dad's bed.  It makes you feel cooler, but it is very noisy.  I didn't expect the jungle to be quiet at night, it wasn't.  There are noises from insects that are fall louder than those from mammals.  Non of the noises are frightening, but they do seem to demand attention.  All this would have been part of the experience, bit the power want off and the temperature just started to rise and rise.  We had to be meeting our guide at 6am, and I was watching the clock thinking 'now I have four hours of sleep... now three...' Given that we'd been up at six the precious morning too I was feeling rotten when we got up.  But get up we did because the birds were unwilling to wait for me to catch their worm.

No power over night meant no hot water for a shower, but there isn't any naturally occurring cold water in Borneo son the shower wasn't too shocking.

We got dressed and covered ourselves in Deet, after-sun, sun block and fabric and went to meet Cairo for our previous breakfast bird hunt.  Cairo told us that birds were his favourite subject. He said he knew his 'Birds of Borneo' book by heart and I think I believe him.  As we walked, me very blurry eyed, he looked around immitated birds noises to try to get a response.

Dad and me looked through our fisher-price-esk binoculars and saw trees, lots and lots of trees.  Cairo, who I think had the eyes of a hawk, was pointing out birds without using his binoculars at all.

After a little while we left the road and went into the jungle.  It wasn't nearly as dense as I'd thought, I had expected something quite unreal though.  I'd was about as dense as a forest in the UK.

 Suddenly, Cairo held his finger to his mouth and motioned for us to quietly come closer.  Pointing into some very dark underground there was a chirping sound.  Suddenly there was a rustle and a very cute bird bounced out.  It noticed us, froze, decided that we weren't either a danger nor edible and continued.  It was about fifteen letters away and the size of a small starling, but much more handsome with a shimmering blue head and back with white streaks.  I turned on my flash and tries to take a photo,  it was too far away. I managed, very slowly, to get closer and just got a photo.

Here is my first bird photo:

Apart from not letting us get too close to him, the bird just went about his morning.  He's a Blue Pitta, he eats leeches.  He is now my favourite birds in Borneo.

Walking around more we saw some distant horn bills but it was mostly Cairo, with his super vision pointing birds out that Dad and me would then totally fail to see with our binoculars.  It was a little frustrating.

A consolation was the bird song, and insect song which was just as loud as the birds.  I think, the call of the cicada is actually the loudest call in the animal kingdom... I'll have to check that though.

This trip was the last for my poor flash though.  The tough little thing suddenly snapped off.  RIP, YN-560.

When we got back, our previously prestine hiking kit was good and muddy, as it should be.  We were told need meet up again after breakfast for the next installation so we went to sit down for half an hour before it was served.

Then things got strange...

To be continued.

P.S.  Mustn't forget the house swifts.  They are noise, tame, love five adults in one nest and really quite lovely.  Like over excited children constantly checking that the other is still there.

Two Nights and Three Days in the Maliau Basin.

We woke up this morning at six (for Dad), and seven (for me) for a seven thirty pick up to the Maliau Basin.  The driver arrived at seven instead of seven-thirty, which scuppered my plan to have a shower.  I grumpily put on my light weight trekking kegs and a pair of trainers and completed the packing I should have completed the night before.  The hotel had agreed to let us store of luggage there between visits. 

Neither of us are really sure what to expect so we have two complete sets of trekking gear, one for wet, one for dry, a towel, hiking boots, light weight socks. Cameras, head torches and binoculars. as well as my Nexus here.  Dad suggested leaving it as it might get very wet but I figured that it was there to be used.

The journey was a long one.  We stopped for food at a small village and ate some rice, noodles (which I must stop getting as they are terrible) and chicken.  It was serves with a nice soup that was a bit like weak OXO with spring onions in it.  It might be that I was so hungry that anything would have tasted amazing, rather that the chief being a genius.  With hindsight, it was served at room temperature.

As soon as lunch was over it was back in the little van for the rest of the journey. So far I had thought that the journey was a bad one.  A little van with almost no leg room and a metal bar placed to hit your head combined with the terrible Malaysian roads. It all  had me feeling a little hard done-by.  It was to get so much worse.  After an hour the road ended and we were driving along dirt path used by the loggers.

It was painfully bumpy and we would be on it for another four hours, at least it would have been four hours if the wheels hadn't got stuck in mud, then, from revving, buried themselves even further in until the chassis of the van was almost flush with the floor. 

The sun was scorching and I'm on my hands and knees with the driver trying to dig out the van with my hands.  We tried pushing and rocking the van  but it was stuck solid.  Someone drive up in a 4x4 and saw we needed help so, in the spirit of helping a fellow traveller, offered to give is a tow out... for twenty ringots.  It took another twenty minutes as the van was too buried to get a tow rope under and, when it was finally attached, it snapped.  

A second attempt got us out and we were on our way again, as speedy as before and just as painfully.

It made us smile that we weren't the only unfortunates.  One of the massive log transportation lorries had also over turned.  We saw two Malays relaxing in the shade, waiting for a pickup.

After a few more hours and bruises and we arrived at a little hut next to a bigger hut next to a massive, luxury hut/conference centre.  The driver finally admitted that the van that had tried so hard couldn't get up the 20%, wet muddy climb ahead of us and that we'd have to transfer to a 4x4 that was waiting for us.  The centre keep track of everyone who is in the basin, I assume so they know how many people to look for if they vanish.  We had to signed in, it actually made me feel kinda important.

The journey from the gate to the accommodation complex was even more bumpy, even in the 4x4. We were joined by a teacher who was there with a Malay school and a ranger, they were called Man and Boy (honestly).  We stopped mid journey to see one of the satellite camps.  It was a scary introduction to jungle wildlife.  Giant ants with enormous pinchers  called Campinotus gigas.

I also saw a tiger leech, it had sensed that we were near and was frantically feeling the air for a bit of us to get a hold of.

I looked into a latrine and saw some very large wasp/hornet things.  I took their picture and one of them spotted the flash and chased me for ten minutes.  Totally uncalled for, I think.

I was actually glad to be back in the van and back on the bumpy trail.  There were some heart-in-mouth moments involving shear drops, steep hills and wet mud.  I'm sure the driver was secretly a little concerned when the truck started to slide towards the rather large drop that we were less that a metre away from.  We didn't fall.  We made it to the complex and, after signing in, we watched a safety video and had some lunch before our night time trek.

The dinner was good, and as we are the only guests we had it all.  We'd been told that we'd go for a night trek if the weather held out so we went back to our cabin and got changed.  Almost as soon as our shoes were on the heavens opened.  Within minutes there was water pouring off the roofs.  Forever hopeful we put on our anaracks, head torches, binoculars, cameras and Crag Hoppers (we must have looked like such tourists) and tried to find Cairo, our guide/minder.  He was nowhere, he'd said that we wouldn't go if the weather was bad and it was awful.  It really brought out some quite amazing insects though.  The rain forest came make big insects.  The Cicada is an armour plated, stupid flying bullet.  It sounds like a garden strimmer.

Like most flying insects it's flummoxed by the lights but with the cicada you really know it.   It'll ceaselessly headbutt walls, ceilings or your head.  Sometimes it'll stun itself for a few minutes before try in again.  Sometimes it'll hit the fan which, it is not armour plated enough to beat, though it comes close.  The floor is littered with poor cicadas that have damaged a wing.  Its wings are quite something too, they are clear bar some veins and very tough.  Apparently, the chicata is so top heavy that if it falls on its back it can't right itself and will die.  Like a fatty.

There is also a moth, an enormous moth with a wing span of about four/five inches.  When it lands you can can see the wing pattern.  It's a charcoal grey with bright white lines running around it.  The wings are thick and furry, it really is very handsome indeed.  Again tough, the floor was gathering more and more of their bodies in varying states if destruction.

Now wet, we went and sat in a AV room for a while and out ranger eventually found us there.  We talked a bit about what we'd do tomorrow and then left for bed.